Contents

Installation

You have to know that there is a great tool to get it running on a linux system, namely the MokoMakefile. This is a sort of wrapper round several instructions, so it is easy to set up and maintain a development environment. If you build the whole MokoMakefile, you will need approximately 12GB, a swap+ram memory of about 1GB and minimum 5 hours time. But we will only build it for Qemu (the emulator that I will use) and that needs (on my system) only 890mb and a 15 min of your time.

To get it running, you will have to tweak your ubuntu a little bit (This will not damage other programs, everything will work as before).

This will download the necessary files of the latest release and build them following the MokoMakefile. After that it will start into the emulator for the first time. Voila you have now successfully installed openmoko onto your ubuntu system.

Creating a menu item for Openmoko (optional)

You can create a menu item for starting Openmoko by doing the following:

Open the terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal)

Go to the openmoko directory:

cd ~/openmoko

open the file moko.sh with gedit:

gedit moko.sh

insert the following text into the file:

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/openmoko
make run-qemu

Press "save" and close gedit

then run the following commands:

chmod +x moko.sh
alacarte

and add a menu item with these values:

Name: Openmoko

Command: ~/openmoko/moko.sh

If you want to you can add an appropriate icon by clicking on the image on the top left. You can download some useful images here:

Help with running Openmoko in Qemu

If you have created a menu item you can start Openmoko through the applications menu of Ubuntu. If you have not, you can start it by:

Open your terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal).

Go to the directory:

cd openmoko

starting with the MokoMakefile

make run-qemu

The first screen of Openmoko will show a nice picture of the Openmoko logo which will be followed
almost immediately by the BOOT MENU, this is done by the bootloader.

In the BOOT MENU you can choose different options. To select an option you have to press enter (=aux) and to execute it, hit space (=power). The default selection will boot Openmoko.
Thus if the BOOT MENU shows, you just have to hit the space bar and the phone software will load.

While booting Openmoko the progress will be shown in text mode. Depending on your computer's performance it might take a while (some minutes even) to complete the boot. When complete you will see the graphical interface as will be shown on the phone itself (but slightly larger due to the larger pixelsize of your screen).

A few pointers on using Openmoko:

You can select the icon that looks like "+" for a list of applications you can run.

You can select the icon that looks like "three gears" for a list of applications that are running now. Here you can also terminate unwanted applications when you are unable to do so from within the application itself.

You can select the icon that looks like a "house" to get back to the first home screen.

The statusbar at the top is always shown and by clicking on the top-left corner you can switch to another application that is already running. The "Home" application is always running and clicking on it will bring you back to the home screen.

Note: for some reason qemu-copy-package-xxx looks for above source file.
Maybe this part can be improved, or a different command can overcome the problem of creating this directory.

When above make command was succesful the next time you start Openmoko Qemu,
you still need to make the installed application available in the application list.
For this you can select from within Openmoko the terminal application
(Select icon that looks like "+" for the list of available applicaitons, select "Applications" and select the "Terminal").
In this terminal double-click, so you can type in the commands:

opkg install /media/mmcblk0/xxx_a.ipk
exit

After the "exit" command you should return to the Task list, in which the newly
added application should be listed under a name which was choosen when building the ipk package.

Updating Openmoko

Open your terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal).

Go to the directory:

cd openmoko

Update with the MokoMakefile

make qemu

Configurations/OS

OS X/Kubuntu

I'm running the Neo-Qemu in the Qtopia-Image in VMWare Fusion on a MacBook Pro (2x2.6GHz, 4GB), so it's an emulator in an emulator. Speed is acceptable. Be sure to look at the end of this page for the right filesystem image to flash. A main point in compiling Neo-Qemu is the gcc 3.x. For some reason it did not install on my Mac, but I think I can live with the emu-in-emu solution for a while.

I tested this today (uImage-2.6.24+svnr4301-r4251-r5-om-gta01.bin) on hardy. Qemu doesn't compile with gcc4 you need:
sudo aptitude install gcc-3.4
After the init process started, became the emulation extremely slow. It takes more than 15 minutes
to boot the GUI on 2GHz CPU and you have to klick & hold the mouse several seconds to see
any visual response. It would be great if there was a easy way to get a shell,
i.e. why the serial port (ctrl+shift-3) doesn't have a getty & co attached?
Can anybody confirm this?
--Captn 12:29, 18 April 2008 (CEST)

Hi, just to tell that the Install ipkg package part is not effective since there is no room to install the .ipk on the QEmu (say ROM image) device.

Have any idea on how to get over it or to enable the automatic memory allocation on QEmu if allowed?

I have compiled the Qemu source just fine on Ubuntu Hardy, but when the emulator started it showed up with an unusual QT theme. After the nice picture with the two boots there appeared a message line "No network" in the middle of the screen and 4 icons (cellphone, Q, star and lock). The buttons below the icons are unresponsive. They show a change in the background color when I click them with the mouse, but then nothing happens. Even if I press them for several seconds as noted above. Has the Openmoko theme been accidentally replaced by a non-working QT theme or did I configure something wrong on my end?

Built succesfully on a Fedora Linux 9. Trying to run on the linux box but with the XServer on OS X. It doesn't react to any keypress. Now tried it locally. The keypress works, but stil having some issues to get openmoko up.

--User:Joe
Allso tried to run the makefile. After fixing the problem with the download_dir (by setting it to http://downloads.openmoko.org/distro/testing/) and removing the _dev parameter from the calls to "most_recent" and "download" methods the make script finishes successfully.
However, there seems to be no working kernel installed on the nand. Every time I select boot from the menu, it says

This is a tutorial for getting an emulation environment on an Ubuntu system.

Installation

You have to know that there is a great tool to get it running on a linux system, namely the MokoMakefile. This is a sort of wrapper round several instructions, so it is easy to set up and maintain a development environment. If you build the whole MokoMakefile, you will need approximately 12GB, a swap+ram memory of about 1GB and minimum 5 hours time. But we will only build it for Qemu (the emulator that I will use) and that needs (on my system) only 890mb and a 15 min of your time.

To get it running, you will have to tweak your ubuntu a little bit (This will not damage other programs, everything will work as before).

This will download the necessary files of the latest release and build them following the MokoMakefile. After that it will start into the emulator for the first time. Voila you have now successfully installed openmoko onto your ubuntu system.

Creating a menu item for Openmoko (optional)

You can create a menu item for starting Openmoko by doing the following:

Open the terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal)

Go to the openmoko directory:

cd ~/openmoko

open the file moko.sh with gedit:

gedit moko.sh

insert the following text into the file:

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/openmoko
make run-qemu

Press "save" and close gedit

then run the following commands:

chmod +x moko.sh
alacarte

and add a menu item with these values:

Name: Openmoko

Command: ~/openmoko/moko.sh

If you want to you can add an appropriate icon by clicking on the image on the top left. You can download some useful images here:

Help with running Openmoko in Qemu

If you have created a menu item you can start Openmoko through the applications menu of Ubuntu. If you have not, you can start it by:

Open your terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal).

Go to the directory:

cd openmoko

starting with the MokoMakefile

make run-qemu

The first screen of Openmoko will show a nice picture of the Openmoko logo which will be followed
almost immediately by the BOOT MENU, this is done by the bootloader.

In the BOOT MENU you can choose different options. To select an option you have to press enter (=aux) and to execute it, hit space (=power). The default selection will boot Openmoko.
Thus if the BOOT MENU shows, you just have to hit the space bar and the phone software will load.

While booting Openmoko the progress will be shown in text mode. Depending on your computer's performance it might take a while (some minutes even) to complete the boot. When complete you will see the graphical interface as will be shown on the phone itself (but slightly larger due to the larger pixelsize of your screen).

A few pointers on using Openmoko:

You can select the icon that looks like "+" for a list of applications you can run.

You can select the icon that looks like "three gears" for a list of applications that are running now. Here you can also terminate unwanted applications when you are unable to do so from within the application itself.

You can select the icon that looks like a "house" to get back to the first home screen.

The statusbar at the top is always shown and by clicking on the top-left corner you can switch to another application that is already running. The "Home" application is always running and clicking on it will bring you back to the home screen.

Note: for some reason qemu-copy-package-xxx looks for above source file.
Maybe this part can be improved, or a different command can overcome the problem of creating this directory.

When above make command was succesful the next time you start Openmoko Qemu,
you still need to make the installed application available in the application list.
For this you can select from within Openmoko the terminal application
(Select icon that looks like "+" for the list of available applicaitons, select "Applications" and select the "Terminal").
In this terminal double-click, so you can type in the commands:

opkg install /media/mmcblk0/xxx_a.ipk
exit

After the "exit" command you should return to the Task list, in which the newly
added application should be listed under a name which was choosen when building the ipk package.

Updating Openmoko

Open your terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal).

Go to the directory:

cd openmoko

Update with the MokoMakefile

make qemu

Configurations/OS

OS X/Kubuntu

I'm running the Neo-Qemu in the Qtopia-Image in VMWare Fusion on a MacBook Pro (2x2.6GHz, 4GB), so it's an emulator in an emulator. Speed is acceptable. Be sure to look at the end of this page for the right filesystem image to flash. A main point in compiling Neo-Qemu is the gcc 3.x. For some reason it did not install on my Mac, but I think I can live with the emu-in-emu solution for a while.

I tested this today (uImage-2.6.24+svnr4301-r4251-r5-om-gta01.bin) on hardy. Qemu doesn't compile with gcc4 you need:
sudo aptitude install gcc-3.4
After the init process started, became the emulation extremely slow. It takes more than 15 minutes
to boot the GUI on 2GHz CPU and you have to klick & hold the mouse several seconds to see
any visual response. It would be great if there was a easy way to get a shell,
i.e. why the serial port (ctrl+shift-3) doesn't have a getty & co attached?
Can anybody confirm this?
--Captn 12:29, 18 April 2008 (CEST)

Hi, just to tell that the Install ipkg package part is not effective since there is no room to install the .ipk on the QEmu (say ROM image) device.

Have any idea on how to get over it or to enable the automatic memory allocation on QEmu if allowed?

I have compiled the Qemu source just fine on Ubuntu Hardy, but when the emulator started it showed up with an unusual QT theme. After the nice picture with the two boots there appeared a message line "No network" in the middle of the screen and 4 icons (cellphone, Q, star and lock). The buttons below the icons are unresponsive. They show a change in the background color when I click them with the mouse, but then nothing happens. Even if I press them for several seconds as noted above. Has the Openmoko theme been accidentally replaced by a non-working QT theme or did I configure something wrong on my end?

Built succesfully on a Fedora Linux 9. Trying to run on the linux box but with the XServer on OS X. It doesn't react to any keypress. Now tried it locally. The keypress works, but stil having some issues to get openmoko up.

--User:Joe
Allso tried to run the makefile. After fixing the problem with the download_dir (by setting it to http://downloads.openmoko.org/distro/testing/) and removing the _dev parameter from the calls to "most_recent" and "download" methods the make script finishes successfully.
However, there seems to be no working kernel installed on the nand. Every time I select boot from the menu, it says